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He was proud that he had established his clan in a remote, inaccessible portion of the Everglades, where there were fields of corn and other foods that his people had planted for their cook pots. The land of the Everglades also provided much game, as well as food taken from the water that surrounded their island.
Turtle meat was one of the best-loved foods, as well as alligator meat; the tails of the smaller, younger alligators were the most valued and tender.
He smiled as he remembered the many times he had wrestled a large alligator to get to the smaller ones. After killing the big one, he would proudly takehome its skin, which was used for making clothes and household products, while the meat from the smaller one would go to the cook pots.
No, neither he nor his clan would ever give up their home or their freedom to whites.
It made him angry all over again when he recalled how some of the Seminole had been enticed to give up their homeland for eight hundred dollars to each warrior and four hundred to each woman and child.
He was proud to say that his forefathers had not been among those who were tricked by the Spaniards, or by the Americans.
The only white person he would like to know was the woman with the long and flowing golden hair and eyes the color of violets.
Only recently had he dared to travel this close to the tall white house that was called a mansion. On three sides of it were fields of tobacco, and on the fourth, the river that he was now traveling on to return to his home and his duties as chief.
Although he had vowed to himself only moments ago not to think about the murdered white man, he could not help wondering what he was to the golden-haired woman. For when she had discovered that he was dead, she had collapsed into a faint.
Could that man have been her husband?
Wolf Dancer had seen her loving manner toward the white child and wondered if this child was her daughter.
He chided himself for his curiosity about the golden-haired woman, yet she had captured hisheart in the brief moments he’d observed her. He could not erase her from his mind any more than he could deny his own identity as a Seminole!
But he knew that she was forbidden to him; to care for a white woman might bring trouble into his people’s lives, and he ha
d protected them from the moment he had become chief upon the death of his father seven moons ago.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the sight of something unexpected a short distance away in the river.
It was a canoe floating aimlessly about, and from his vantage point, he could only conclude that it was empty, for he saw no one in it.
He was curious as to whom the canoe might belong to; it had been made in the same way his people made their canoes, from a hollowed cypress tree; such boats were called pirogues by his people. He went onward, then stopped when he had his own pirogue alongside the other one. As he looked down, he saw how wrong he had been to think no one occupied the canoe.
A black man lay there on his back, unconscious, an arrow in his upper right shoulder, with blood dripping onto the floor of the pirogue.
Wolf Dancer knew about the slaves that worked the fields for whites and could only assume that this man was an escaped slave.
Yet who had shot him?
He studied the design of the arrow. It was of his own Seminole people’s design.
But as he had concluded when he’d seen thatother arrow lodged in the white man’s chest, none of his people were responsible.
No one in his clan was foolish enough to do anything to bring harm to the women and children of their village.
So who could be responsible?
Who was trying to cast blame on his people?
This was not the time to reason the mystery out in his mind.
The black man had suffered the loss of much blood.
He might even be near death.
Determined to do what he could to save the wounded man, Wolf Dancer climbed from his canoe into the other, gently lifted the man into his arms, and transferred him to his own pirogue.
Allowing the other pirogue to float away, Wolf Dancer arranged the man on bottom of his canoe. As carefully as he could, he broke off the portion of the arrow that protruded from the man’s shoulder.
